Things I'll Never Say
by Beautifully Ugly
Summary: JL. 'I remember the first time I truly saw you. You mightn't remember it—I doubt you saw me. I was naught but a boy to you, and you should have been naught but a girl to me, but of course you weren't. You'd always been more.' R&R.


**Disclaimer:** Credit for this piece goes to _Coldplay_! Because they're ace and I bloody love 'em. Also, credit to JKR for thinking up _Harry Potter_; if she hadn't, I don't know where the hell I'd be right now, lol.

**A/N:** Hey guys! Okay, so it's been ages since my last finished piece. So, naturally, I'm bound to be a bit rusty; if you find any grammar/spelling mistakes, don't hesitate to tell me. I had an English mock today and I'm drained of all proper coherency, and although that's no excuse, really, it does sort of justify why my brain's shut down on me.

This piece was inspired by a bad bout of introspection, a few cracks in the heart, James and Lily, and "Shiver" by Coldplay (give it a listen - you'll understand why I chose it). By the way, if a few lines seem familiar, it's because I nicked 'em off the song, lol. It fit perfectly, and I couldn't resist.

And, well, lastly...just don't forget to review!

* * *

**Things I'll Never Say**

I remember the first time I truly saw you.

You mightn't remember it—I doubt you saw me. I was naught but a boy to you, and you should have been naught but a girl to me, but of course you weren't. You'd always been more.

You were such a pretty little thing. So fiery, so very captivating. Try as I might, I couldn't take my eyes off you.

Did you notice? Perhaps you did. Perhaps you waved it away in the hope that it was a passing fancy. And at the time, it seemed so very plausible. Because I was fourteen—young and juvenile and downright immature. I had no interest in anything besides pranks that my friends and I played and laughing at the girls that fell at our feet.

Did you know that it was Sirius who noticed you first? It was.

I remember striding into the Great Hall that first day in Fourth Year, throwing a couple of winks at a group of Hufflepuffs who were watching Sirius and I walk down the aisle. It was amusing, it really was, to see them flush and stutter and giggle, to see the effect the two of us had on them. Sirius chuckled beside me and I grinned at him, and it was easy, this life we were living.

And then he saw you.

_Is that Lily Evans?_ he wanted to know. He was looking ahead in such a way, with such an awed expression that I simply had to know why he was speaking of you like that – why he was _looking_ at you that way.

I remember following his gaze to see a girl, a girl with ruby-red tresses and almond-shaped emerald eyes with delicate freckles dotting her lovely features.

You were smiling at something Marlene had said, and Mary beside you was grinning along too but I only had eyes for you because that smile – Lily, that smile was _stunning_. It was exquisite and I could think of nothing but you and your smile for all that evening.

You took my breath away that day.

You looked _so beautiful_, Lily. The definition of 'beauty' did you no justice, and it still doesn't. And I knew how selfless a person you were, how intelligent and wonderful and funny, because I'd spent _four years_ with you in the same school, the same house, the same classes—Lily, how had I not _seen_ you before that moment?

_Wow, has she always been so —?_, Sirius murmured, and I, still awe-struck, couldn't answer him.

That was the day that Sirius reckons I fell for you. And I did. But Lily, I was only _fourteen_ and I had no concept, none at all of love or life or any of the other things I've recently had epiphanies about.

So I didn't know what I felt for you, whether it was love or something else. To me, at that point in time, Lily, love was naught but a four-letter word associated only with my parents and the Marauders and my broomstick. That was it. That was all it was, and I had never thought it would be anything more.

And then you came along, Lily, wrenching my senses and my heart out of my grasp, and my whole world fell into turmoil. All that I knew simply _wasn't_ anymore, because you, passing through my day fleetingly, had left everything bathed in a new light.

For the first time in my fourteen years of life, I'd begun to _see_.

I saw you, you and your friends and everyone else I hadn't ever thought much of before. I saw the Slytherins, too; how some of them weren't as ghastly as Sirius and I had always stubbornly believed. I saw how Severus Snape acted with you and how you acted with him.

I _saw_, Lily. But I didn't like what I saw. My world, the one I'd been living in for all that time—that was the world I felt comfortable in. And so, simply to prove wrong every small realisation that had hit me in the face, I acted more arrogantly than ever before. Because it couldn't be true—_none_ of that could be true.

The foundation of my life, Lily, had come apart at the seams. So haphazardly sewn together in an attempt to tighten, I'd forgotten everything else. There _was_ no everything else for me at the time. But you made me _see_ everything else, and my life unravelled.

It was then, after you confronted me at the Lake that Fifth Year, that I understood why it wasn't working any longer. This was _my world_, where everything precious to me was my only concern, and the strands had just tangled into a knot that, try as I might, I couldn't seem to loosen.

And you, that first day in Fourth Year, had become more precious to me than anyone or anything ever had been.

I _realised_, Lily. I realised that I could never weave the strands back together unless I paid you more heed. Because I cared for you, I cared for you so much, and keeping you content was my top priority from then onwards.

Lily, I realised I'd fallen in love with you that first day in Fourth Year.

* * *

Did you want me to change, Lily? I've changed for good.

Sirius complains that I've grown up. Remus seems quietly pleased about it. Peter's confused about the drastic change in my behaviour. And, Lily, I truly don't know what to do about you.

You still don't speak to me unless it's absolutely essential. I hadn't expected that to change with the snap of a finger—I knew it wouldn't. But, Lily, you're not even _civil_ to me. You don't even return a smile if I happen to send one your way. Lord, Lily, you're pouring salt into my wound. Can't you see I'm trying to heal?

Sirius thinks I should tell you _everything_. I can't move on, he says, if I'm not honest with you. But I _have_ been, Lily, I _have_ been. Did you think I wasn't when I asked you to Hogsmeade all those times in Fifth Year? I wanted to go with you. I wanted to _be_ with you.

Lily, I still do.

I'll never have the courage to tell you how much I care for you. But you must know. You _must_, from the amount of times you've caught me staring your way—from _how_ I stare your way.

Remus always tells me I'm useless at hiding things. He says if I keep eye-contact, it's far too easy to discern how I feel, and that if I avoid eye-contact, it's obvious I'm hiding something. He says, out of the many things that I apparently am, an actor and a liar isn't, and will never be one of them.

If what he says is true, Lily, you _must_ know how I feel by now. But surely, if you did, you would treat me slightly better? You'd smile at me once in a while, simply to ease some of the guilt I'm carrying with me. You'd speak with me softly like you did with Remus that day during the prefects' meeting. You'd see how much I'm trying to change for you.

You don't. Lily, do you even _see_ me?

Because I look in your direction, but you pay me no attention, do you? It's to be expected. Of course. But it still stings, nevertheless.

Your gaze meets mine, and you pause fleetingly. So does my heart.

Do you see me? Do you see me, Lily? Can you see that time itself seems to have stopped, waiting for our next move? Do you see it in my eyes? Could you possibly know that I can't breathe? Because I can't, Lily, I can't; my throat is far too tight and my heart is frozen and I feel so aware, so very aware of you and the way your eyes flash, just for a fraction of a second, when I stare at you.

And then your eyes, so lovely and emerald, flit over me as easily as mine should over you.

Yet they don't. They never do, and they probably never will, either.

It's as though we're a broken record, Lily, you and I. In more ways than one.

Because my gaze, it seems to catch, the way the record player does, when it lands upon you. And the record player will endure failed attempt after failed attempt to move over that snag in the record, move on and carry on playing the rest of the song because it's been programmed to do so. If it doesn't—if it _can't_—then it's no use.

I seem to be the record player, endeavouring time and time again to move on, _let go_, but oh, Lily, don't you see how very enchanting you are? Because that snag, whether I acknowledge it or not, it's there. And I, much like the record player, can only _try_.

Lily, I feel useless when I can't do it, when I can't move on. When you shout at me and tell me to get a life, I try to tell you how I feel, I do, but the words somehow evaporate and my throat suddenly dries and I can't think anything else but how stunning you look and how much I care.

And our fights—they're like a broken record too. Over and over and over again, we fight, and you yell and shout and scream. And though you are a _vision_ when you're seething, it hurts so much. It hurts to have the one person you care about more than anyone else tear you down and rip you into shreds. It hurts to have your weaknesses picked upon and thrust into the limelight for the entire world to see by the one person you'd never do that to in return.

Lily, I positively _hate_ you sometimes. I really do. I may have embarrassed you a few times during Fifth Year, as you consistently tell me, but never after that. Fifth Year, Lily, I was a prat. I was an arrogant toerag, a bloody idiot, a little twit, and all the other names that you scarred me with.

But I'm not anymore. And you, you refuse to believe I could have changed. You _refuse_ to believe that I could have grown up. Lord, Lily, you're the _reason_ behind everything I am now; how can you not understand how hard I'm trying?

I'm trying, Lily, I'm _trying_; I'm trying _so hard_, just to see if you notice—if you _care_, even in the slightest.

Lily, Lily, don't you see? _I love you_, with all that I have. If you were mine, if I were yours, I'd give you anything. Everything. The moon and the stars, Lily, a necklace made of raindrops. And I'd _do_ anything if it meant you'd look at me and smile and see the man I'm trying to become.

You're enthralling, Lily, everything about you is so _enthralling_. I could spend days, days simply _looking_ at you, etching your features to memory and marvelling at how lovely you are. I could never grow tired.

Lily, _I love you_.

It may not seem like it, but I do. This heart, this tiny, insignificant little instrument throbbing away inside my ribcage—it holds more emotion for you than anyone ever can.

It's _you_ I see, but you don't see me. It's _you_ I hear, Lily, so loud and so clear.

_It's you_.

* * *

So here I am, standing before you with everything to express and nothing to say.

It's especially hard, with you looking at me with those blazing emerald eyes which tell me you know exactly what I need to say, but please, don't say it.

And I won't, not today.

I wonder if we'll ever bridge this huge, gaping chasm of miscommunication between us. I wonder if there ever will be an '_us'_, a James-and-Lily of any form. But I don't voice any of this as we watch each other, brimming over with everything we feel and with words unsaid that hover all around us in the air we exhale.

I won't say any of that, but Lily, I need to tell you this.

And I mentally prepare myself for the words, think for a second how to say them. My eyes meet yours once more, and I remember the first time I truly saw you.

You mightn't remember it—I doubt you saw me. I was naught but a boy to you, and you should have been naught but a girl to me, but of course you weren't. You'd always been more. You still are.

You were such a pretty little thing. So fiery, so very captivating. Try as I might, I couldn't take my eyes off you. It seems not much has changed within three years, has it?

No, it hasn't.

You're watching me now, naïve to all that I feel, and god, Lily, I should tell you, I should tell you _everything_. But the words I need to say are far more important and force their way out of my mouth, bright and bold and coated with emotion.

"I love you."


End file.
